#Rjalker has fucking EDS

[rjalker]

[ID: a five panel comic in mostly black and white, showing a werewolf on the right side, and text on the left.

In the first panel, the werewolf is grinning with a mouth full of teeth and saying, "Here are some of my personal experiences with being disabled for anyone who wants to be able to write a disabled character accurately :)", with a smiley face emoticon at the end.

In the second panel, the werewolf is smiling with its eyes closed, while tags in dark grey appear in the empty space across from it: "disability" "reference" "writing advice" "writing disability" "dislocated rib" "save for later" "hypermobility" "dislocations"

In the third panel, a new tag reading "whump reference" has been added in big black letters, covering some of the smaller ones. The werewolf's face has gone blank in shock.

In the fourth panel, The werewolf is snarling, and the tag "whump reference" has grown larger and erased all the tags before it.

In the fifth panel, the background is light red, and the werewolf is motion blurred as its mouth is open to scream with its eye glowing red,screaming in all caps black text:

"If your first thought upon seeing disabled people talk about their personal experiences is "Ooh I should write torture porn about this" you are a shit fucking ableist person who needs to stay the fuck away from disabled people forever!"

End ID.]

If you tag any of my fucking posts about disability as "whump reference" or "whump prompts" you are so ableist and horrible it's not even fucking funny. Stay the fuck away from disabled people, and especially stay away from my posts where I am sharing my personal fucking experiences with being disabled.

At what point will "whump" writers stop being ableist fucking shitbags? Never, apparently!

Edit for people are fortunate enough to not know this yet:

"Whump" is what people who write stories where they do nothing but torture a character for gratuitous violence call it. It goes far beyond normal levels of "this is an angsty story", it's literally just people torturing characters and getting off on doing so.

So the person who left that tag meant that they were going to be using my personal experiences of being physically disabled to write a story where someone with my exact disability using my personal examples was going to be tortured through that disability, probably graphically.

"Whump" writers are constantly being ableist and putting their horrific shit in tags for disabled people and doing crap like this.

They literally look at me, a real disabled person, and think my experiences, which I was sharing for people who wanted to write about disabled characters /respectfully/ is inspiration for a story where they're going to litterally torture and humiliate someone exactly like me, with my disability, using my own words to help describe it.

It's ableist, it's fetishizing, it's absolutely revolting and evil.

[rjalker]

I’m not super flexible either (that I’ve noticed) but I do dislocate things ridiculously often, I don’t know if the hyper flexibilility is always present.

When I lost my knuckle I got x-rays from the doctor and he did mention I had a lot of extra space around my joints? But im also not super flexible in the joint areas they just pop in and out easily

[rjalker]

well, for writers out there who want to have disabled characters:

things that are painful to do with a partially (or fully) dislocated rib, which people with certain kinds of hypermobility will probably already be aware of:

Breathing deeply. you will not be able to. the messed up rib will forcibly catch your breath and hurt.

Walking. whatever side it is will hurt every few steps if you move too far.

Bending over? Nope. You can't breathe if you do this.

Passively it feels like being very forcibly jabbed in the back with a blunt object. Like imagine someone is walking behind you forcibly stabbing you in the back with a blunted plastic point or something. Like a halloween toy. A consistant pressure/pain that gets more intense if you move the wrong way..

Breathing at all? Well you will have to keep stopping because again, it will forcibly catch your breath and hurt.

Sitting??? if you move the wrong way it'll hurt and you can't breathe.

Lying down???? maybe if you find the right position it'll be fine but if you move it'll hurt.

????

how do you fix this??

well maybe if you have a character who's doctor who's an expert at this they could put it back into place or something but I doubt it. mostly you just have to get lucky and move the right way and it'll go back.

If your character has hypermobility, they can dislocate a rib by something as simple as:

sweeping the floor

reaching to grab something off a shelf

picking up a stack of books

picking up a jack o lantern that's not even that fucking heavy

holding an umbrella

changing shirts

sleeping

dreaming about cute baby dragons and reaching to pick them up in the dream and apparently this made you move IRL so now your rib is fucked up!!! have fun with that!!!

what can you do about this? try not to move in ways that hurt. Take pain medicine I guess, but I don't think that's exactly a good idea because not feeling the pain won't mean it's no longer dislocated so you could probably hurt yourself worse if you kept moving a certain way. IDK. I don't have health insurance.

[rjalker]

having hypermobility is just like being in pain so often that you just stop remembering to comment on it because it happens so often. I'll go out for a walk to play Pokemon Go (when outside is not literally like the inside of an oven, fucking absolutely not doing that this week dear fucking gods) and I can be standing still and all of a sudden one of my ribs is like hey. do you like stabbing pain? I've got some stabbing pain, isn't this fun? Or my hip will be like "Hey, I'm gonna dislocate quick, hope you don't mind". Like wow. Okay. Fuck you.

Anyways.

PSA. It's not normal to be in pain so often you forget to comment on it. It's not normal for walking or standing to hurt you.

[rjalker]

I thought I would be clever by using an umbrella as a parasol but no my ribs just decided that holding an umbrella is illegal and partially dislocated in protest. The same thing happened yesterday with me literally just holding my phone to play Pokemon Go.

[rjalker]

partially dislocated a rib........carrying a bag of chips :(

[rjalker]

ow :(

[rjalker]

They were cute tiny little pink baby dragons in my dream and I reached to pick them up and that's when I dislocated my rib in real life. I guess I moved my shoulder or something.

[rjalker]

One of the main reasons (the other bring lack of money and the only store nearby never having them in stock) I haven't bought a cane yet is:

What if it hurts my wrist? Usually my left hip that hurts the most, so I would have to hold it in my right hand. And that's the wrist that was randomly hurting for like s month straight

Also: Where am I going to put it when i ride my bicycle?? Just not use it???

Update June 12th, 2023: The walmart here finally got some in stock and thankfully only cost $9, so I did manage to get one. You can see it here after I painted it.

The bad news it does hurt my wrist like I thought it would, and the wrist braces all cost like, $20 minimum.

The good news is it does help stop my leg from hurting.

Also, my bike has now had a flat tire for months because I can neither afford to get it fixed nor do I have any way of getting it to the bike shop (Which is on the entire other side of this massive city) even if I had the money until I can get a ride, so I can't even use it, but I am able to make the cane smaller and fit it into my backpack.

So, it's kind of a balancing act between which currently hurts more: my leg, or my wrist.

also, bonus, gives me something to poke leaves with so I'm less likely to step on a snake when looking at pawpaws.

[rjalker]

mentally chanting "it's fine" to try and convicne my hip not to dislocate as I pull a cart with a case of water in it.

[rjalker]

if X rays weren't absurdly expensive I'd have called my mom and said "hey I currently have a partially dislocated rib want to get me an X ray so you can see the proof of what I've been telling you for years?"

she's like "you can't just say you dislocated something like that" like okay then are you gonna pay for an X ray next time it happens???? I have fucking checked, you can't tell from looking at my chest that anything's going on.

[rjalker]

I prefer dislocated rib pain yo whatever the fuck my jaw's doing so I'm not actually going to complain.

[rjalker]

today's adventures in "Rjalker has fucking hypermobility" half the bones in my left foot have just gone on strike apparently. They keep trying to dislocate and hurt so far all fucking day. soaking my foot in hot water didn't do anything noticeable.

which is really annoying because we just had someone give us a bunch of canna lily rhizomes for free (Carrying on a tradition -- their neighbor gave them some fore free 20+ years ago! It's the same plant!) that should be getting planted right now but standing and crouching to dig is making my foot hurt more >:(

[rjalker]

Had two toes on my not-regularly-dislocatea foot randomly dislocate for no fucking reason and had to shove my foot into the tub with hot water.

[rjalker]

anyways I meant to make this post yesterday but kept getting distracted by Babylon 5:

I need a little spy camera or something to stick in the kitchen because apparently, in no way I can figure out, when I am standing at the stove or sink, I am standing in some Fucked Up Specific Way™ that means my hip wants to dislocate within 60 seconds.

This always happens any time when I'm in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove to cook or at the sink to wash dishes.

I cannot fucking figure out what I'm doing to make this happen. It is not a conscious decision on my part to stand any specific way I don't normally stand.

The floor in the kitchen isn't cold, we're not in Pennsylvania anymore, so that's not it.

Like what the fuck, brain? What are you doing?

[rjalker]

one of my ribs has been trying to dislocate for the past hour and it's really annoying. Bitch I am literally just sitting here. Where are you trying to go.